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The Art of Ending

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote:

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."

I think I kinda suck at both.  It takes me a little while to become comfortable in a new environment: to form the close types of bonds with people and places that make life meaningful.  But then once that happens, I become incredibly attached and can't imagine a life before or after.

I think that Longfellow is talking about transitions.  So far in my life I've had several major transitions and handfuls of lesser ones: my family moved during the summer between eighth grade and high school, I moved away to Michigan for college, after college I came out to DC for AmeriCorps.  Since the conclusion of my AmeriCorps term of service, I've kind of felt like I've been swirling around in the transition from hell.

I'm here.
But the reason I came here has ended.
I'm working at a coffee shop while I'm waiting for my life to pick up it's natural trajectory again.

But like I said: I get attached.
Just this past week, there were two independent occasions in which I had to say 'goodbye' to awesome regulars who were leaving the area due to work changes.

Last night I said goodbye to one of the construction guys you may remember from this post.  As we said our goodbyes and gave each other our best wishes for the future, he embarrassingly drew attention to the fact that I was getting a little choked up.  But I can't help it when it comes to goodbyes!

During the summer after college and before I moved to DC, I worked as a live-in tutor in Athens for the richest family I'd ever met (they owned a bunch of crazy-nice hotels and some sort of steel-shipping conglomerate).  It basically sucked.  The 3, 5, and 7 year old girls I essentially worked for were mean, prada-wearing, screaming, spitting, hitting, brats who made me cry like every night.  The family had a household staff (of course...) consisting of a groundskeeper, 3 cooks/housekeepers, and a nanny, who'd all come from China to work there about 5 years back.  They were the only reason I survived the summer.

Lately, I've been thinking that perhaps God places certain people in our lives for prescribed periods of time because we simply need each other.  There were particularly difficult times during that summer where I felt like Haiyan, the girls' nanny, was in fact my nanny.  Haiyan spoke Chinese and Greek + a couple English phrases here and there.  I speak English.  But things like loneliness, hurt, culture-shock, and exhaustion are universal.  So is kindness.  Haiyan might've noticed one too many brats spit at me for trying to get her to do her homework, and so she'd bring me an ice cream cone.  I've never eaten so much ice cream in my life.

I hated Greece.  But that was one of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had to say.

Likewise, I can't wait say goodbye to this transition period that I'm in right now.  But, I've also grown attached to my coffee shop peeps, and saying goodbye (whenever that finally happens) will suck.  I have some of the girls that work at the shop over to my house to share a meal and chit-chat + a little harmless bitching about our 'favorite' customers about once a month.  I get choked up when my actual favorite customers move away.

I guess I don't really have anything profound to say about 'the art of ending' because I'm really bad at it myself.  The idea that people who were so important to certain periods of your life simply cannot be involved in the same way when those periods are over, doesn't sit well with me and probably never will.

But that's how transitions work.  And that's why they suck

But good thing it's an art-form, since I'll probably have a lifetime of big and small transitions with which to master!
   

This Week...

It was a cranky week.

Sometimes I'm content with my life right now.  Other times, as was the case this week, I am very much not.

About a week ago, my manager told me(*note: didn't ask) that I would be interviewing with our district manager this Thursday for a supervisor position at our shop.

I'd be interviewing for the promotion along with another co-worker: this 20-year-old punk who's been begging our manager for the position for weeks.  My manager got sick of his groveling, and so he relinquished the decision-making power to our DM.  If you ask me, it seems like a lot of fuss over something I didn't even necessarily want.

Once he discovered that he would be interviewing 'against' me, I started to notice a change in the way this co-worker treated me.  He'd loudly call me out on really random things in front of my manager; it's no secret that I prefer making drinks to working on the register.  I'm really good at bar, and the register's for newbs!  But suddenly this was spun into:

'Yeahhh, Alicia's really good at bar, but that's all she can do.  Put her on register and she freaks out.'

Huh? This went on all morning.

And then later that day, he was bragging to all of us about how he took a picture of another supervisor sitting on a stool and texting while she was on the register.  He showed it to our manager and told him that she's constantly on her phone on the floor, or in the back room on Facebook.  What are we, in high school?

If this is how he's acting before we even interview, imagine how he'd treat me if I get the job...or all the gloating I'd have to endure should he get it!

Yep.  This is my life now.

My interview was whatevs.  My heart wasn't in it.  Honestly, I mainly went along with it because I really don't want Tattle-Tail-McVee for a supervisor.

The last question that the district manager asked me was: 'How bad do you want this job, and what are you willing to do to get it?'  That really threw me off.  And I'm not a good liar.  I think I mumbled something incomprehensible, and I don't think he bought it.  In any case, we'll find out Monday.

I went with my roommate to Bible study on Tuesday - I know a lot of the people in the group, but  I usually work nights so I can rarely go.  At the end of the night, everyone goes around and shares their high and their low of the week - cheesy, but whatevs.  I bet you can guess what my low was.

You know you're pathetic, though, when your 'high' for the week is Ben & Jerry's Late Night Snack ice cream for dinner.

Have you ever just needed a 'win'?  Not in the Charlie Sheen sort of way.  Just anything semi-positive in you life?

I was talking with a different co-worker about my interview - how I really don't even care.  And how I don't want the position anyway, because if I get another job in the near-future I'd feel bad about quitting.

He called me out on my crap of course, saying that I do want it  -  like I want to get a good grade on a test or like I want to win a game - but I'm afraid of being let down again if I don't get it.

Ugh.

The other day, someone lent me this sweet book, Kisses From Katie, about this amazing 20-something woman who decided to spend a year between high school and college working with orphans in Uganda, and ended up staying there and adopting 14 little girls.  It's perspective-shifting, convicting, and all that good stuff!  And it's given me back some of that joy I've been burying under my lame-crankiness all week.

But it also made me ache to figure out my calling.

Caffeine Has A 6-Hour Half Life...

I don't like to drink things with caffeine.  No; the irony of the fact that I work at a coffee shop is not lost on me.

Did you know that caffeine has a 6-hour half life?  I don't remember where exactly I gleaned this little tidbit from, but I promise I'm not making it up!

Refer back in your memories, if you will, to your 5th grade science class.  Now, shuffle on over to the fossils unit.  Remember anything about carbon-14 dating?  Scientists are somehow able to analyze the amount of carbon remaining in ancient organic matter.  They also know that it takes a prescribed number of years for half of the carbon to leave prehistoric bones or whatnot.  Using this scale, they can figure out how old something is.  

Like I mentioned earlier, I typically don't caffeinate.  I don't like what caffeine does to my body.  It makes me feel all jittery and I can't sleep. 

For some reason that eludes me at present (3:24 a.m.), I decided that it would be a good idea to down a 26oz black iced tea at the end of my closing shift earlier tonight.  There's just something about a nice, big (free) glass of iced tea that makes all of your past knowledge of the effects of caffeine: experiential, academic, or otherwise, just disappear right along with that first satisfying gulp. 

That cursed first gulp took place at 11:00 p.m.  By my estimates, I have about 1 1/2 hours yet, before half of that stinkin caffeine leaves my system.

It doesn't help matters that in addition to the caffeine, tonight my head is full of other things (of an entirely non-chemical nature).

It has been almost 6 months since I started working at the coffee shop.  I began just as my AmeriCorps term of service was ending, full of the naive assumption that my stint as a barista would be short-lived. How long could it take to find my dream job that would simultaneously fulfill all of my idealistic desires for meaningful vocation?  A couple months and scores of fruitless applications later, discouragement started creeping in.  In an effort to stave off the apathy, I became vigilant in my efforts to make the best of where I was and what I was doing. 

I started being more intentional about getting to know the people I was serving on a daily basis.  It turns out that our regulars are pretty awesome, and I began to truly enjoy being part of their daily routines.

I need to have at least a couple people near me who I feel close to and with whom a mutual giving and taking of stories, secrets, joys, and pains can take place.  I deeply value some of the unexpected friendships that have grown out of this job.

6 months later, I can finally say that I am content with where I am.  

Which has its positives (as outlined above)...

and its negatives:  becoming too content/comfortable here, when my passions lie elsewhere. 

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, I was presented with a very tempting offer from some dear friends to leave everything behind here, pick up, and start over in another state.  So, in addition to the caffeine, this opportunity is rolling around in my head and keeping me up into the wee hours of the night (time check: 4:16 a.m. [45 minutes until half of the caffeine has left my body]). 

One of my favorite books is Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.  Berry has a fascinating worldview; a true wordsmith, his novels read like poetry, and his poems touch your very soul.  In Jayber Crow, the protagonist/the book's namesake says:

'Now I have had the most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been.  I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift, and times when, looking back at earlier time, it seemed I had been wandering through the dark wood of error.  But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore, that I have been led' (Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 66). 

I've always loved this image of the character in the novel being led throughout his life.  I feel it too.  I've also felt all that 'adrift,' 'wandering,' 'dark wood of error' stuff plenty over the past several months.  But looking back, beyond all of my 'wandering' of late, I can clearly see the path that has led me to here: it's that selfsame path that leads out and beyond here (wherever that may be). 

Cappuccino.

I hate cappuccinos.  With out a doubt: my least favorite drink to make.  Especially those effing 'bone dry' ones.

In case you're ignorant of the subtle nuances involved in caffeinated beverage options (as I was before I started working here), allow me to outline the basic coffee shop menu for ya:

1. Hot Drinks:
1. Espresso-based:
1. Espressos (shots of espresso alone, with foam, or with whip cream)
2. Americanos (espresso shots + hot water)
3. Lattes (espresso shots+steamed milk+flavor syrups of your choosing)
4. ***Cappuccinos (espresso shots + milk + a lot of foam)
1. 'Bone Dry' Cappuccinos (espresso shots + onlyyyy super thick foam - NO milk)
2. Coffee-based:
1. Drip-coffee with or without room for cream/sugar
3. Teas
2. Cold Drinks:
1. Espresso-based:
1. Espressos over ice (shots+ice)
2. Americanos (shots+cold water+ice)
3. Lattes (shots+cold milk+syrups+ice)
4. Cappuccinos (shots+cold milk+ice+foam)
2. Coffee-based:
1. Iced Coffee (with or without milk+sweetener)
3. Blended:
1. Frappuccinos (milk+coffee/or not+syrups+emulsifiers+ice+whip)
4. Teas
1. Tea (with or without lemonade+sweetener)

***If you'll refer back to the definition of 'cappuccino' in the above outline, you'll notice that this beverage contains espresso shots, mostly foam, and a little steamed milk.

In order to steam milk, you have to hold you metal pitcher of milk up to the steaming-wand; then, bring the pitcher down for a few seconds where just the surface of the milk and the wand meet so that the milk makes that distinct tearing sound, which is liquid 'aerating;' and then, bring the pitcher to rest on the ledge, with the wand just chillin' in the middle as it brings the milk up to temperature.

When you make a cappuccino, however, instead of bringing the pitcher to rest all nicely on the ledge while the wand finishes heating the milk, you have to hold the pitcher so that the wand just meets the surface of the milk for the entire time so that it creates a bunch of foam.

Those stinkin 'bone dry' cappuccino-orderers are always GIANT foam snobs, so the foam has to be super perfect and thick and NOT bubbly.  When the register passes over a cup with 'BONE DRY' written on it, I almost invariably get performance-anxiety and it takes like two pitchers of milk for me to get enough of that stupid dry foam.

Anywho.  This old Italian woman came into the shop today and ordered a small cappuccino. Blah. So I make it.  She comes back like 2 seconds later, shoves her drink in my face, and asks:

'Do you know how to make a cappuccino? This is half foam!!!'

'Ummm.........yes?' I respond cautiously...

'Cappuccinos don't have foam!'

'Wait...did you mean to order a latte, maybe?

'No. I want a cappuccino...NO FOAM!' 

Then she goes into this little rant on the Italian etymological roots of the word 'cappuccino.'  I tuned out for most of it, trying to figure out what this lady actually wanted, but I did gather that there was some sort of black cow imagery going on...who knows? After I got home, I did my own digging and found this website that explains the different Italian espresso beverages (as well as the etymology of the word 'cappuccino' - but found nothing suggesting that in Italy, cappuccinos have no foam...oh well.  If you order a cappuccino here at our shop, or at any other coffee shop in the States for that matter, you're askin for foam!)

In any case, I finally make her a small latte, which she proceeds to inform me had too much milk. 

In the end, I think that she wanted something in the vicinity of a wet espresso macchiato (the 'wet' part refers to the polar opposite of a 'dry' macchiato or cappuccino: shots + no foam - all steamed milk). 

Oh, Cappuccinos. Guh.

Fun & Games

I was a Young Life leader when I was a student at Hope College!  Anddd two of the best summers of my life were those after my sophomore and junior years, which I spent interning at a Young Life camp in MN. Holla! For those who are not familiar with Young Life, it's an international para-church organization engaging mainly college-age peeps and other awesome adults in relational ministry to high school and jr. high students: kind of like youth group, but way louder and crazier, and full of gross games, stupid skits, and singing lots of Taylor Swift songs.

Once, I ate a worm at club.  We leaders made this brilliant deal with our kids, where if they got like 50 new students to come all on one night, we'd get up there and swallow worms...

I'm a vegetarian(-ish), and basically the pickiest eater in the world.  So, the fact that I ate a worm for my Young Life kids shows you how much I love them!  Leading Young Life is one of the things I've missed most since graduating college.  While high school students can often be self-absorbed, angsty, little punks, I love all of the potential, insightfulness, and heck - even (...especially?) the angst - that kids are full of at that age.

At the coffee shop, I work with a lot of high school-age (or thereabouts) students.  They're often little punks, but it didn't take me long before they started reminding me of my awesome Young Life kids from back in MI, and for me to start treating them as such.

We talk about all kinds of things in between making beverages: friends, relationships, under-age beer pong tournaments (which I don't condone), school, and even faith.  There are a lot of stupid little Young Life leader-insider phrases that we in the 'biz' throw around (often with an ironic tinge) when referring to hanging out with our Young Life kids: 'doin life together,' 'stayin relevant,' 'gettin excited about what they're gettin excited about' (totes my excuse for loving the Twilight Saga),  etc.  Even though the coffee shop is our job, I think it's really cool that we don't let this opportunity for (pardon the expression) 'doin life together' to be wasted!

Disclaimer: anyone with a Young Life background must love icebreaker-type games.  It's kind of a prerequisite.  As are guitar-playing-skills (still workin on that one). So, sometimes (all the time) I make us play games while we work.  Some of my favs are:

- Two truths and a lie - you think of two random facts about yourself that are true, as well as one that's a lie, and everyone has to guess which isn't true (e.g., I was on Bozo Buckets as a child, I once swallowed a gold fish, and I had a pet duck - #2 is false... it was a worm!!!)
- Horse, Muffin, Bird - Looking only at a person's face, describe him/her using any combination of three of the following:  horse, muffin, bird (e.g., there's a double-horse-bird, she's a triple muffin, or that guy's a double-bird-horse).  Sounds means...but all in good fun!
- Guess the bevvy  (pretty self-intuitive: soccer mom's gonna get a skinny vanilla latte)
- Your Team - If you see someone wearing something particularly horrible and 80's-ish; or, perhaps, some dude accessorizing with superfluous amounts of spikey chains; someone dressed really tool-y in all sear-sucker plus a straw fedora, maybe?  Then ya put 'em on the other person's 'team'!  If you're not careful, by the end of the night you could have a team full of real fashion-forward winners! (Also sounds kinda mean-spirited, but once again - all in good fun).

So much fun & games and doin' that good ol' life together at the coffee shop!

Clopening

Clopening: verb. The act of working a closing shift, followed directly by an opening shift.  (Alicia couldn't keep her eyes open today because her manager is trying to kill her by scheduling her to work clopening shifts all week). 


This is what my week looked like:

Sunday- closing
Monday-opening
Tuesday-closing
Wednesday-opening; making the 2 hour commute to Lorton to teach
Thursday-closing
Friday-opening
Saturday-Sunday- OFF! Hallelujah!

I have sleep issues anyways - I think it's something I inherited from my worry-wart mom - if residual unease is left over from her day; if there's something important happening in the morning; or, back when her children were high school-age and out galavanting/stirring up who knows what kind of mischief on Saturday nights - she can't sleep.

Alarm clock anxiety is the one that really gets me.  I trace it back to the first summer interned at Castaway Club Young Life Camp back in college.  I was the morning cook! It was awesome!  I had to unlock the kitchen super early and get my amazing crews of high school- and college-age volunteers PUMPED about cooking brekky and prepping lunch for 600+ campers every morning.  In the middle of the night once, my stupid cell phone just up and died, so come 5am my trusty alarm failed me!  It wasn't a big deal (interns sleep upstairs, right above the kitchen, so someone just ran up and woke me), but every night for the remainder of the summer, I would wake up every hour on the hour thinking it was morning.  On two occasions, my body even convinced itself that it was indeed wake-up time, and I got dressed, went downstairs, started warming up the ovens - only to snap out of it an come to the horrific realization that it was only like 3am or something.

And still now, whenever I have an early-morning obligation, the traumatic after-effects of my failed alarm persist in haunting me.

All this to say: my circadian rhythm is effed after this week.

I was all set to go into my little rant with the supervisor I closed with last night, about how our manager gave me the schedule from hellz this week (because complaining's fun):

"Guh.  Want to know what my schedule looked like this week?!"

Sideways glance + smirk.  'Yes, pleaseeee tell me.'

Woops.  Oh yeah - my supervisor also works full time at a bank, drives an hour both ways to get to our shop where he puts in about 32 hours/week, and has three kids under five back at home.  Complaining just got a lot less fun.

For the most part, I'm upbeat, positive, and all that good stuff at work (not quite so much this week).  But this supervisor of mine is one of the most glass-half-full, genuinely nice, 'zen' guys I know.

One day I asked him why he's always so chill and positive all the time, and he started talking about this tattoo he has.  It's of this cross-legged guy juggling three balls of fire with a giant smile on his face.  And that's exactly how I picture this supervisor of mine.  He never really lets on that much, but I know he has a ton on his plate.  But he knows what he has to do.  And he just takes whatever is sent his way in stride. You guys should meet him - he's truly an inspiration in his calm, uncontrived, easy-going, but get 'er done kind of way!


'One morning
the fox came down the hill, all glittering and confident,
and didn't see me--and I thought:

so this is the world.
I'm not in it.
It is beautiful.'

(Mary Oliver, 'October,'  New and Selected Poems Vol. 1)